28 ways to make a telephone

I love how most young children have no problem seeing different uses for everyday items.

My two year old toddler loves the telephone. Unfortunately for him he’s not allowed the real phone anymore so he’s made do. Here’s what he’s used to make his pretend calls with recently:

one of his socks

the TV remote control

That’s not my Dinosaur book

a fork

his sippy cup

one of his shoes

a piece of sucked toast

a teddy bear

a plastic measuring jug

one of his dad’s shoes (“HELLO!”)

a pre-loved Playstation handset

a nappy (unused)

a hairbrush

the stereo remote control

a half full packet of baby wipes

a sausage (cooked)

a rescued Uno playing card

the poker

a plastic Ferrari racing car (with noises)

the pepper grinder

a banana (pre-chew)

a Thomas the Tank engine place mat

AC/DC CD case (If You Want Blood)

a roll on deodorant

a tube of toothpase (push up type)

a football

an old fashioned (ie with a cord) Fisher Price Chatter telephone phone

a toothbrush (mine)

Sir Ken Robinson talked about how imagination leads to creativity which in turn leads to innovation. If innovation is about finding new uses for knowledge we already have or using that knowledge in a new way then it looks like my boy will be able to teach others a thing or two. If he can manage to hang on to his curiosity and imagination as he grows up.

Sir Ken says we don’t grow into creativty, we grow out of it. In this entertaining TED talk from 2007 he says “Creativity is as important now in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.”

The talk is 20 minutes long but it’s well worth a look if you’ve not already seen it.

3 thoughts on “28 ways to make a telephone”

I’m very much in favour of imagination. I think that it might depend on a child’s family as to how much her/his imagination is cultivated when very young. I suspect that imagination is part of our exploration of and learning to understand the world. Maybe we do retain the imagination that we had as 2- or 3-year-olds but it is channelled into problem-solving of a more abstract nature.